It Won't Hurt a Bit (24 page)

A young man, immaculate in a better-living sort of way, approached. Even the hanky wrapped round one hand was spotless. Carefully, he wiped the ledge before laying down his injury.

I took his particulars.

‘I’m a missionary,’ he said by way of occupation. ‘Praise the Lord!’ His look was fanatical as he raised his good hand in jubilation, its descent, however, hampered by the counter. There was a painful sounding crack.

‘And your employer would be,’ I bent over the admission form, ‘God, I suppose – one
d
or two?’

My customer was shocked. Reviewing his status, he checked the hanky, waving it like a health warning, and seeming surprised his hand was still attached. Then he checked the palm of the other and noticed it now had a red mark. As if in revelation, his brow cleared, his face lit up and he exclaimed, ‘Stigmata! Excuse me, Sister, I’m in the wrong place for I have much work to do. This is a calling and I must share it with true believers.’ He left in such a rapid burst of Hallelujahs even Mr Morgan couldn’t join in.

‘Fancy him thinking I’m a Sister.’ Charmed, and adjusting my friendly mode to efficient mode, I got ready for the next patient.

‘Name please,’ a pen was poised. This beat bandaging, no matter how simple that had become.

A small man, dungareed to the hilt, gave a coy smile, then transferred his gaze to everywhere but my helpful self.

‘Name please.’ I didn’t want to shout but maybe he was deaf. A queue of ailments was beginning to form behind him. Somebody nudged him.

‘Ah’m cried Cherlie,’ at length he conceded.

‘I have to know your full name,’ I pointed out irritably.

‘Ma freens a’ ca’ me Cherlie – an’ if it’s gud eneuch fur them, it’s surely guid eneuch fur you.’ He wasn’t giving an inch.

The receptionist returned and resumed normal service.

‘Name please.’

‘Charlie Broon – spelt wi’ a w,’ the little rat said, then, leaning over, whispered, ‘Yon maidie wis affa personal.’

‘Whit maidie?’ she asked, dropping her plums.

‘Yon ane afore ye – it’s surely nane o’ her business asking sic stuff. She’s jist a wee maidie.’

Mr Morgan now extended his repertoire to include ‘Charlie is my darling’ to much accompanying thigh slapping and common hilarity. I hoped, since Matron was famous for everything but humour, that this wasn’t going to be warbled into my ward report. With a bit of luck it’d be forgotten and, tiring of its regular jingle and with some relief, I was eventually able to say, ‘You’ll have to change that tune ‘cause I’ve been put on night duty.’

‘So fare ye well,’ came a staff chorus in dubious harmony.

Night staff cover was a doctor, staff nurse, student nurse and porter. As the door to the main entrance was locked at night, he was armed with a big stick – a useful diagnostic tool if anybody rang the bell.

Although accident pile-ups, mugging victims and the odd little headache made the place hectic at times, there were quiet spells which were supposed to be spent cleaning out sterilisers in the clinics, and tidying up after day staff.

Whilst the doctor grabbed sleep when he could, Staff Nurse did jigsaws kept for the entertainment of children in the warmest waiting room, the porter dozed peacefully at the admission entrance and I loitered through the other rooms carelessly dusting and letting sterilisers overflow.

The old building creaked in a friendly way and must have had some healing ghosts because the long dark corridors felt welcoming and safe. Even if the night sounds of motor and human traffic were muffled through the thick walls here, it felt right at the heart of a happening city.

Policemen, often responding to traffic accidents with casualties, brought an unruffled manner to any crisis, whilst we were handy for making them tea.

‘Does that whistle work?’ I asked a constable who, attacked by a sudden bout of thirst, had dropped by.

‘Certainly.’ He handed it over.

‘Help ma Bob! What did you do that for?’ he wept after I gave it a disbelieving blow.

Several of his colleagues came rushing in, leaving a bewildered porter gazing at the entrance door now hanging on one hinge.

‘Now then, now then, what’s going on here?’ they demanded conventionally, opening their notebooks and searching for their pencils.

My policeman blushed as if caught in a compromising situation whilst Staff Nurse was sufficiently taken up with her puzzle to wonder if anybody had seen any missing pieces – and she didn’t mean the door.

Then one of the hospital residents, celebrating his stag party and spying it was open, decided the casualty department was the hottest spot in town.

‘Come on, chaps! This’ll be fun,’ he encouraged his entourage.

‘I’m off,’ said Staff Nurse, under-whelmed at an invasion of happy revellers and no blood. ‘Just see if you can get rid of them, there’s someone there I can’t stand.’

‘You’ve always been far too aloof,’ shouted Staff Nurse’s least favourite person, and pounced on her as she was trying to fit into the brush cupboard. As it was full of cleaning equipment, I was surprised she even knew it was there.

‘Get lost,’ she said and shoved. Unfortunately, her strength matched her reluctance and he staggered back. His foot landed on a brush, making the handle swing forward to whack him on the back of the head. In a daze, he stumbled forward and hit his forehead on the side of the door. Blood began to flow.

‘Tsk tsk!’ said Staff Nurse. ‘I suppose I’ll have to get Doc up now. Blast!’

‘Amazing how when it’s their own blood it’s a different matter. Still, I think a couple of stitches should fix it,’ she advised him remorsefully, then with a bigger regret, ‘and I can’t find the local anaesthetic, you’ll just have to do it without.’

The doctor, none too pleased at having been roused from his sleep, did just that whilst most of the party, sensing trouble, disappeared.

‘Two stitches? I can only get in one – so, let’s see …’ with care, he snipped.

‘Hey! You just cut me!’ roared the patient, recovering sobriety.

‘Yes, Staff said you’d need at least two.’ The resident was anxious to clear himself.

‘You certainly know how to make chaps welcome,’ said the patient, ‘but maybe I should go before I really get hurt.’ He nodded at the bridegroom, now his only companion, ‘And you can point him in the direction of home when he wakes up. I’m blowed if I’m carrying him. Not with the injury I didn’t have before I came here.’ As he left, the place fell silent with our remaining guest dozing in the waiting area and clutching a fire extinguisher as if it were his bride.

‘I think we should take that off him,’ said the porter. ‘Oh my Lord!’

The bridegroom had slid off his chair – the emergency knob struck the ground – there was foam everywhere and our only patient had just disappeared.

‘There’s nothing like a white wedding,’ said that unflappable Staff Nurse, ‘but I suppose we’ll have to get him out of there, then we’ll have to hose him down.’ The idea seemed to please her. ‘That should wake him up – better than a gastric lavage anyway.’

‘Yeah, that should work. I don’t particularly want to see the contents of a washed out stomach and see, after he’s gone, let’s barricade the door and put off the outside light, it seems to be attracting trouble,’ said that caring doctor.

‘Did you know our names are up on the notice boards again?’ Maisie was persevering with her new contact lenses, so maybe the red eyes didn’t mean bad news. ‘You’re an extra and I’m off to the Eye Ward – suitable, eh?’ She blinked hard.

Recently Mrs Ronce had been praising the past glories of Beth and Sally’s cleaning skills and now it was getting harder to ignore the scrubbing noises coming from the bathroom and coinciding with our homecoming.

‘Maybe she’s ill.’ Maisie’s hearing was obviously affected by her sight.

I sighed. Being an extra didn’t mean sitting in a tidy corner knitting. Instead, it was the huge anxiety of being sent anywhere an extra hand was needed to deal with big trouble in an unknown ward, with strange patients in uncertain circumstances.

Suddenly, cleaning seemed a simple and rewarding task.

‘I think I’ll do a wee hygiene turn.’

‘That’ll be a relief,’ Maisie laughed coarsely as she dabbed her eyes and I went to help Mrs Ronce before going on duty.

Those halcyon and exciting days in Casualty were lost and I was now back in Foresterhill. The uncertainty of where I was to be working made me anxious and irritable. Sitting waiting in the dining room for roll call, I fretted, envying Jo’s serenity as she glided off to the Intensive Care Unit.

‘Have you noticed that even the back of Jo’s shoes sparkle?’ Maisie was full of admiration.

‘Not as shiny as our bath now is and I think your contact lenses must be rose tinted.’ I was sour.

Maisie snapped, ‘What’s wrong with you, Jane? You’re like a bear with a sore head; you’d think you’d to carry all the cares of the universe.’

‘I hate being on extra – you haven’t a clue where you’re going to be sent and if it’s a strange ward, you never know where anything’s kept either.’

‘Bet you’ll have to “special” Mrs Joy tonight.’

‘My oh my, Maisie! You really do cheer a girl.’

‘Nurse Macpherson, to special Mrs Joy in the kidney unit.’ The charge nurse sang out as if it was a conspiracy.

To ‘special’ was to care for a seriously ill patient all the time. For some, this was the most rewarding aspect of nursing, but I didn’t relish the prospect of having to be fully functioning with a brain at low ebb and little likelihood of back-up support for any emergency.

‘Good luck.’ Maisie was so cheerfully set for a night of knitting in a ward noted for the encouragement of lying very still and eye rest, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d time for putting back in her rollers.

In no hurry, I made my way to the kidney unit. I could see that an emergency was in full swing with sisters dashing about after doctors pushing impressively complicated-looking machines. Staff nurses flashed past with handfuls of syringes. I was beginning to think my humble presence was a pleasant mistake when a doctor yelled at me, ‘Get Tacky!’

‘Who’s Tacky?’ I asked a nurse.

‘One of the doctors,’ she rushed past.

‘Dr Tacky,’ I called and yet another white coat appeared.

He gave a funny look whilst I pointed to the room where there was so much activity. I presumed this was Tacky for he disappeared into the chaos within.

‘That’s an odd name for a doctor,’ I said to a ward maid, who was leaning on a brush watching the action with leisurely interest.

‘Hey! That’s not his name,’ she laughed, ‘that’s only what his nearest and dearest call him.’

Great way to start, I thought, making a timid appearance in the unit.

There was just enough time to register the minuteness of the room and the patient when a sister grabbed me in a thankful way.

‘Ah! Night staff!’

You might have thought I was manna from heaven.

She reeled off a list so full of technicality it was like a foreign language. I just concentrated on looking intelligent.

‘Yes. I think I’ve got that,’ I lied in plain English.

Thanks to hospital talk about Mrs Joy, I already knew she was a new, very ill mother, whose kidneys weren’t functioning, making her blood toxic. Student nurses all had an especial concern for young patients, probably because we could relate to them. Tonight, it felt as if the onus for Mrs Joy’s care rested on my shoulders.

‘Her heart is considerably weakened,’ Sister added as an afterthought.

Oh God! More bad news for Mrs Joy.

Cardiac massage was in progress, bringing with it a tension-packed concentration directed on a pitiful thread of life. Surgeons tersely spat orders to subordinates who obeyed with the manufactured efficiency of the desperate calm. As the only available nurse, I was shoved into the middle of the team, whilst Sister, worn and worried, collected her day staff.

I wanted to cry, ‘Don’t go,’ but recognised I couldn’t. Day staff didn’t so much leave, as evaporate. I felt sick with the inadequacy of my knowledge. My purple belt felt like a burden.

‘Cardiac needle,’ one of the team of doctors demanded.

A second froze as everybody stopped. They all looked at me and, as one, roared, ‘Nurse!’

I shot off through the nearest door and found myself in a sluice. Blindly, I hared out again with the roars of, ‘Hurry, hurry,’ in my ears, and raced to the nearest theatre.

It was clear by the sounds of chat that the staff were taking it easy and equally clear that they were in no hurry to answer my frantic bell ringing.

I varied my call to Heaven: ‘Oh please, Lord, hurry them,’ I prayed.

‘Well, what is it?’ a staff nurse appeared, chewing.

‘Cardiac needle for kidney unit.’

‘The last time we gave anything there, it was never returned.’ She prepared to defend her patch.

‘Cardiac needle!’ I screamed, changing her ‘I’ve just done the inventory’ expression to a degree of cooperation.

‘Thanks.’ I grabbed it and ran.

Now, nearing collapse myself, I padded towards the doctors. ‘We don’t need that now.’ A doctor pushed the needle aside like an unwanted toy.

Breathing heavily, I tried out my pulse whilst summoning some energy to transmit to my legs. Revival became complete on discovering that Mrs Joy had rallied and even regained consciousness.

Gradually the crowd dwindled and soon the only people left were Tacky, whose proper name I just wasn’t going to discover, and me. Mrs Joy wanted to know where she was and what was going on and I, mindful of her frail heart, tried to reassure her that all the frightening equipment surrounding us was irrelevant and nothing really to do with anybody.

I must have been boring, for Tacky fell asleep, making it hard for me to fight off the waves of engulfing tiredness as his rhythmic snoring and the patient’s light breathing harmonised to a lullaby.

‘Now, now! What’s going on then?’

Night Sister’s voice cut into the heavy atmosphere, making us start.

‘I never saw you coming.’

‘You mean you never heard me.’ She was triumphant that she’d caught someone napping. Tacky’s snores continued unimpeded, but she seemed reluctant to tackle him.